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Much has been written on the skills and capabilities of a new generation raised with social media, smartphones, and immediate access to data and information via the Internet. Today's college students grew up using the Internet, where they both generate and consume data. But do incoming college students have the skills necessary to thrive in a digital world that requires the ability to generate, analyze, and share insights from data? This paper presents a study, performed at two small New England institutions each with a business focus, which examines the digital skill sets of first-year college students in relation to the skills they have developed before entering college. The authors also consider whether there is a "digital divide" among first-year college students in relation to their previous technology skills. When applying the Databilities framework for evaluating data literacy competencies, results show that teaching data literacy skills to first-year college students will be critical to their academic success as future information technology workers.

This paper discusses the design of interactive gamified assessments for an introductory programming course based on the multimedia segmenting principle and gamification. The objective is to develop more engaging online programming assessments for low-achieving students. The general design follows Nielsen's design guidelines and incorporates Zaharias' usability evaluation framework with the motivation to learn. The methodology employed the Successive Approximation Model Version 2 (SAM2), comprising two key phases: preparation and iterative design. In the initial phase, a comparative analysis was performed to determine the design principles. The iterative design phase encompassed the application's design via storyboards, the development of the high-fidelity prototype, and users' reviews. A qualitative approach was adopted, involving a user-centred design (UCD) session through focus group discussions with 12 first-year students from the Diploma of Computer Science program, all of whom were low achievers in programming. The participants need to review and rate the prototype based on the scales of the usability recommendations, which are visual design, content design, navigation, interaction, gamification design, and multimedia design. The results from the UCD session revealed that all participants agreed with the usability recommendations integrated into the interactive gamified programming assessments, with the highest mean score of 5.00.

The transition into higher education is a challenging process for many students. Students are often underprepared academically (amongst other aspects). This under-preparedness influences students' subsequent academic performance, and ultimately, overall student success. Research has shown that successful student transition into higher education can set the foundation for success at university. A transition programme (Step-Up) was offered to Bachelor of Commerce students before the start of the first semester to better prepare students academically and assist with the transition into higher education. The causal-comparative research design that was adopted demonstrated that in their first semester, the students who attended the transition programme consistently performed better academically than those who did not. Transition programmes can be a valuable form of early academic intervention that can and should be employed to cultivate student success and furthermore enable students to feel more prepared for higher education.

Objective: Identifying the food sources contributing most to total energy percentage, macronutrients, vitamin and mineral consumption among college freshmen, and whether sex played a role. Participants: First-year undergraduate students (N = 269). Methods: Diet was assessed using a DHQ-III and estimated with food source composition tables. Nutrient intakes were expressed as a percentage of total dietary intakes for each food category. Mann-Whitney U tests were used to determine the differences between the two sexes for each food category. Results: A significant proportion of energy and nutrients is contributed by certain food categories, such as grain products, meat, poultry, fish; however, other less desirable sources of energy and nutrient are also identified, including sugary and sports drinks. Among female students, a greater portion of nutritional intakes came from healthier choices. Conclusions: A majority of total energy intake comes from food categories that are energy-dense but also provide essential nutrients.

Effective learning in chemistry education requires students to understand visual representations across multiple conceptual levels. Essential to this process are visuospatial skills which enable students to interpret and manipulate these representations effectively. These abilities allow students to construct mental models that support problem solving and decision making, improving their understanding of complex concepts, for example chemical structures and reactions. The impact of individual differences in mental imagery, such as aphantasia and hyperphantasia, on chemistry students' spatial thinking when engaging with visual representations is not well understood. This paper presents two exploratory studies that examine how the vividness of mental imagery is related to student outcomes in chemistry-related visuospatial problem solving. The first study quantitatively assessed the performance of first-year university students in tasks requiring complex visual and spatial reasoning within a chemistry context. The second study, involving the same participants, used qualitative interview data to investigate their cognitive strategies with a focus on how their mental imagery impacts their problem-solving approaches. Preliminary results suggest that the vividness of students' visual mental imagery did not significantly impact their ability to spatially reason with visual representations in chemistry. Our findings also indicate that students with aphantasia may employ alternative strategies that mitigate their lack of visual mental imagery. This paper highlights the need for further research into the diversity of cognitive mechanisms employed by chemistry students of varying mental imagery capabilities.

During their first year of study at university, many students encounter challenges in developing learning strategies that align with success in the courses in which they are enrolled. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic heightened the challenges as universities were compelled to transition to online learning. Therefore, this study investigated the self-reported use of learning strategies in a first-year chemistry course delivered online due to the COVID-19 pandemic to identify learning strategies associated with success. Grounded in self-regulated learning (SRL) theory, a case study approach with an explanatory mixed methods design was adopted. Quantitative data were collected using a hybrid of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire and the Online Self-regulated Learning Questionnaire. Follow-up open-ended questions were emailed to the students for the qualitative part of the study. Statistical analysis of the quantitative data was performed using SPSS and RUMM2030, while thematic analysis was applied to the qualitative data. Students reported more frequent use of SRL strategies of environment structuring, effort regulation, and elaboration. Conversely, critical thinking, task strategies, help-seeking, and peer learning were reportedly used less often. SRL strategies linked with success in the course were identified as effort regulation, goal setting, and time management. The findings from the qualitative data revealed an impact of online learning due to the pandemic on the use of peer learning and help-seeking strategies. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for educational practices, particularly in the context of hybrid learning in the post-pandemic era.

Solving chemical problems entails content knowledge and mastery of problem-solving processes. However, students sometimes lack metacognitive processes required for problem solving in chemistry. This study investigated how first-year chemistry students engaged with the metacognitive problem-solving scaffold Goldilocks Help. Data was collected from an activity, which involved students reflectively comparing their problem-solving attempts to an expert solution. These comparative reflections (N = 373) were thematically analysed to investigate scaffold engagement in three dimensions: cognitive, emotional, and behavioural. Findings showed that scaffold use, coupled with self-reflection, allowed students to identify flaws in their solutions that were either problem specific or related to their problem-solving skills. Students were able to propose improvement strategies, such as posing prompting questions to themselves and finding multiple alternatives for evaluating an answer. Students, who initially lacked structured problem-solving skills, found that scaffolding helped them to slow down metacognitive processes that would otherwise be rushed through or engaged with on a surface level. Students' resistance to the scaffold was due to fear of making a mistake or viewing the scaffold as requiring extra time and effort. Within a semester, many students demonstrated an improvement in successful and structured problem solving but some required more practice to internalise the scaffold. Our findings also indicated that students' reflections on problem solving became more sophisticated as a result of continued exposure to the scaffold and iterative opportunities to compare their work to expert solutions, to self-assess, and to reflect. Further research on reflective writing in chemistry education should focus on the ipsative nature of such assessments, i.e. processes focusing on students' own progress, growth, and improvement, compared to their previous performance, while recognising the power relations operationalised in course-embedded reflections. From the teaching practice perspective, having an awareness of students' thoughts, emotions, and actions can help instructors differentiate between levels of student capabilities, mindsets, and needs for extra support, allowing teaching efforts to be directed at promoting metacognitive and structured problem solving.

This study represents an application of the entertainment education approach utilizing aspects of arts education to deliver campus policy and protocols to a population of incoming first year students at new student orientation. Consistent with previous applications in research, these theatrical entertainment messages were combined with a post-show discussion followed by a post-show survey. Data for this study consisted of those three elements (the show, the discussion, and the survey) and we describe these data using AI-based content analyses and network modeling. We report on the recall of campus information including emergency phone numbers and on questions of campus policy regarding student behavior. For this population, we recommend a dual-pronged approach where the meaning related to the information is provided during the heightened period of audience involvement during NSO, and recall is supported through targeted resource communication in the following months and/or through first-year seminar courses. The prevalence and specificity of student responses lends toward the consideration of policies for new students related to the limitation of logistical obstacles, and multifaceted approaches to the dissemination of health-related information, and crisis response formats.

Benefits of summer bridge and early arrival experiences include the academic and social integration of incoming first-year students into their chosen institutions. The unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic created opportunities to re-imagine delivery of activities and engagement of incoming first-year students in summer bridge and early arrival experiences. In summer 2020, 100 historically underrepresented racial/ethnic minority incoming first-year students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors participated in The Ohio Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (OH LSAMP) virtual summer bridge or early arrival program at six of its partner institutions. The summer bridge and early arrival program is designed to promote and foster academic integration, social integration, and sense of belonging at and within the institution and LSAMP. We aimed to determine virtual programming effectiveness in meeting program goals at OH LSAMP partner institutions, during the COVID-19 pandemic, using students' perceptions of academic integration, social integration, sense of belonging, and satisfaction. Overall, students were satisfied with program implementation and indicated agreement with academic integration, social integration, and sense of belonging. We discuss the findings and lessons learned in delivering summer bridge or early arrival experiences virtually, during a global pandemic.

The aim of the study is to investigate the use of digital technology in English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom using various digital tools through computers and cell phones. These tools and their effect on self-perceived knowledge, learning, and English use were analyzed at the University of Tabuk. The study was conducted on a sample of 605 first-year students at the University of Tabuk for their first two semesters of mandatory beginner and intermediate English courses. Students were asked to fill out a form before and after introducing digital use in the EFL classroom for a whole semester as a university initiative. This involved utilizing audiobooks, Grammarly, HelloTalk, and Duolingo, with the purpose of using these tools to develop and improve students reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. The questionnaire scales have been taken from different sources mentioned in the methodology section and analyzed through the bivariate correlation test, multiple regression analysis and paired "t" test to evaluate the association between the use of digital learning in EFL classes and self-perceived knowledge, learning, and the use of English. The results of this study showed that there is a positive relationship between the use of digital tools in the classroom and students' development in language learning.

The academic success of first-year students' learning in science faculties is by no means assured, especially in an Open Distance Learning setting with its limited number of face-to-face encounters between students and lecturers or tutors. Therefore, such encounters should be highly efficient in view of the considerable amount of knowledge transfer to students. The University of South Africa (Unisa) makes provision for contact sessions of 15 hours per semester for selected modules in an attempt to elevate the pedagogical efficiency of these sessions by focusing on the threshold concepts as an innovative way of learning. This paper shows that tutorials adopting the threshold concepts approach have the potential to make students academically more successful. The focus of this study is an introductory information systems module that teaches the Python programming language. Our statistical analysis demonstrated that the year marks and final exam scores of the participating students were frequently higher than those of the students in the control group.

Examination of the personal characteristics (i.e., gender, participation styles) of participants and the technical infrastructure (i.e., device type, internet connection type) of Instructional Discussion Forums (IDFs) can provide functional clues for mitigating social anxiety in these settings. In this context, this research investigated variances in learners' participation styles and social anxiety in IDFs in terms of gender and ICT availability. In addition, it explored the predictive relationships between participation styles and social anxiety. A sample of 272 freshman undergraduate students discussed various topics related to Internet ethics for three weeks through an IDF. The results indicated that participation styles differed by gender and ICT availability in several respects. First, handheld devices and cellular internet connections exerted a medium-size effect on social anxiety. Further, "to get information" and "to fulfill requirement" purposes in the "Why" dimension of participation styles had a small predictive relationship with social anxiety, as did "analytical" and "practical" participation approaches in the "How" dimension. Of these, only the "to get information" purpose negatively predicted social anxiety. Overall, participation styles accounted for 19.1% of the variance in social anxiety. Based on the findings, future directions and practical implications are suggested for both researchers and practitioners.

Higher education students need help and support to enable them to cope with the challenges of their studies. The aim of this study was to investigate the perspectives of first-year undergraduate students on predictors of psychosocial support in challenging situations. A creative art-based descriptive research design was employed utilising an individual One-Page Profile form to gather data from 240 first-year students from two different universities in Slovakia. Data was collected and analysed using a content-thematic and visual approach. Four significant individual predictors of psychosocial support were identified: emotional, instrumental, informational and appraisal. Emotional support consists of desirable mental health, defined by the students as experiencing happiness, self-satisfaction, self-development, relationships which are satisfying, loving and safe, trust, empathic acceptance, and care from others. Instrumental support varies from personnel up to material resources e.g., people, animals, and assistance such as financial services. The preferred informational support is peer-to-peer counselling, followed by professional counselling. When students describe appraisal support their needs are primarily in the areas of well-being and self-efficacy. The study makes various suggestions on how University staff can provide first-year students with support and counselling in their everyday challenges.

Computer quiz games are introduced to improve teaching and learning in a freshman engineering chemistry course in an English-as-a-second-language (ESL) environment. These quiz games are developed and implemented as supplemental and augmentative tools to enhance traditionally delivered lectures. The paper shows an increase in students' motivation and compares the performance among students who participated in computer quiz games, a paper-based quiz, or neither activity. An assessment of the effectiveness of quiz games in learning is conducted via a proposed novel chemistry achievement test, the Freshman Engineering Chemistry Aptitude Test, and an attitude questionnaire. The findings contribute to our understanding of the role of game-based learning in students' achievement in chemistry and their motivation and attitudes toward learning general chemistry at a university within an ESL environment, while the computer games developed are useful in all English-based chemistry classes.

This chapter describes a research study of first-year college students and their perceptions of personal and school-based research and suggests instructional strategies to bridge their everyday digital research practices with academic knowledge construction.

Transition from high school to higher education poses a significant challenge for students, particularly in chemistry, where students' prior laboratory experience is varied. Traditional laboratory education, focusing on chemical knowledge, scientific methodology, and practical skills, does not focus on the development of translational skills and establishing a proper level of self-efficacy, critical for students' success as future scientists. To address this problem, we developed the Chemical Kitchen, a transdisciplinary simulation utilizing the parallels between professional gastronomy and chemistry laboratory practices. By engaging students in creative food experiments that mimic chemistry experiments, the course aims to enhance practical skills in a less intimidating environment. We evaluated the impact of the Chemical Kitchen on students' self-efficacy through pre- and postcourse surveys. We found a significant adjustment in students' self-efficacy: those with initially lower self-efficacy experienced increases, while those with initially higher self-efficacy saw decreases, showing a "leveling of the playing field" among first-year chemistry students. Qualitative feedback highlighted the course's success in providing a fun, engaging, and meaningful learning experience, underscoring the importance of innovative teaching methods in enhancing practical skills and confidence. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of the Chemical Kitchen in establishing students' self-efficacy and practical and transferable skills, offering a novel approach to laboratory education that could be beneficial across various scientific disciplines. Future research is encouraged to explore the long-term effects of such interventions on students' engagement with science and their overall development as learners.

Teaching programming efficiently to students in the first year of computer science education is challenging. It is especially cumbersome to retain the interest of both groups, when the student group consists of novice (i.e., those who have never programmed before) and expert programmers in the same crowd. Thus, individualized teaching cannot be achieved in a traditional lecture hall for a larger student population setting and poses a pedagogical challenge. This article presents various pedagogical approaches and explores different assessment forms to foster student active learning (SAL), drawing from years of experience teaching a programming course. A detailed analysis has been conducted to understand the effect on the students' learning and perception of a course given different pedagogical approaches and varied assessment forms. The analysis is based on a course offered across three different campuses with the same course description. The key difference between the campuses however is the choice of pedagogical approach, where one of the campuses uses a bottom-up pedagogy. In contrast, the other two campuses use the top-down pedagogy to teach programming concepts to the students. Across the three campuses, the assessment form in the course has varied from regular practical school exams together with a theoretical multiple choice format, a practical home exam during the pandemic and most recently a portfolio. The findings show no significant differences in the learning outcomes based on an analysis of the grades across campuses and extensive student surveys.

Contribution: This article proposes a new theoretical model with a goal to develop future human computational thinking (CT) in foundational computer science (CS) education. The model blends six critical types of thinking, i.e., logical thinking, systems thinking, sustainable thinking, strategic thinking, creative thinking, and responsible thinking into the design of a first-year undergraduate programming course. The study describes a creative blended pedagogy that embeds the proposed model into the course plan. Background: The emergence of artificial intelligent systems such as large language models from a knowledge provider perspective, coupled with a gradual change in post-pandemic outlook of education challenge the relevance and raises concerns about the future of education. The 21st-century human CT requirements, viz., learning to code (skill) and thinking computationally (competency), will be inadequate in the future. Moreover, there is substantial evidence which shows that most introductory programming courses fail to integrate critical elements like ethics and responsibility as part of the course. Intended Outcomes: The authors anticipate experiential learning models such as this has immense potential to future-proof CS education, as well as make future software engineers responsible citizens. Application Design: The proposed model blends six types of thinking into the design and activities of the course. The underlying theoretical basis of these activities revolve around three key principles: 1) experiential learning; 2) self-reflection; and 3) peer learning. Findings: This case study from a liberal educational institution in India qualitatively shows evidence of students developing six critical elements of thinking that shapes their future CT ability.

In this research, we assessed the impacts of participation in a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Scholars community built around the scaffolding of multiple strategies that fostered belonging and integrated the use of wise psychological interventions to enhance the experiences of college students who belong to groups that have been historically underrepresented in STEM. Wise interventions are small, psychological strategies that have been demonstrated to have a profound positive impact on student experiences and success in academic contexts. We found evidence that our STEM Scholars community encouraged the development of growth mindsets, helped our students experience meaningful inclusion and belonging in college, and facilitated students' ability to connect their personal values and academic work. We also saw strong evidence that the structures we placed as part of their 1st year experience contributed to our students' resilience in the face of the stressors caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In recent decades, there has been rapid development in digital technologies for automated assessment. Through enhanced possibilities in terms of algorithms, grading codes, adaptivity, and feedback, they are suitable for formative assessment. There is a need to develop computer-aided assessment (CAA) tasks that target higher-order mathematical skills to ensure a balanced assessment approach beyond basic procedural skills. To address this issue, research suggests the approach of asking students to generate examples. This study focuses on an example-generation task on polynomial function understanding, proposed to 205 first-year engineering students in Sweden and 111 first-year biotechnology students in Italy. Students were encouraged to collaborate in small groups, but individual elements within the tasks required each group member to provide individual answers. Students' responses kept in the CAA system were qualitatively analyzed to understand the effectiveness of the task in extending the students' example space in diverse educational contexts. The findings indicate a difference in students' example spaces when performing the task between the two educational contexts. The results suggest key strengths and possible improvements to the task design.

The COVID-19 pandemic shifted higher education online, drawing attention to synchronous learning and instruction on digital communication platforms. Learner-centered teaching practices in the tertiary level, such as mathematical discussions, have been shown to benefit student learning. The interactions involved in online synchronous mathematical discussions have been studied less. Most research taps into these aspects drawing on students' academic outcomes and reflective interviews. This study explores instructional practices as they unfold online, with a focus on student-instructor and student-student interactions. We zoom-in to online synchronous teaching and learning processes on a popular communication platform by analyzing Linear Algebra tutorials in the first pandemic year. Using the commognitive framework, we characterize instructional interactions with the construct of a learning-teaching agreement. The analysis resulted in three interactional patterns, where in all cases, the tutorial transformed at some point to the one dominated by the instructor.

Self-efficacy has emerged as a popular construct in second language research, especially in the frontline and practitioner-researcher spaces. A troubling trend in the relevant literature is that self-efficacy is often measured in a general or global manner. Such research ignores the fact that self-efficacy is a smaller context-driven construct that should be measured within a specific task or activity where time, place, and purpose domains are considered in the creation of the measurement. Task-based language teaching researchers have also largely neglected the affective factors that may influence task participation, including self-efficacy, despite its potential application to understanding task performance. In this report, we present an instrument specifically developed to measure English as a foreign language students' self-efficacy beliefs when performing a dialogic, synchronous, quasi-formal group discussion task. The instrument's underlying psychometric properties were assessed (N = 130; multisite sample from Japanese universities) and evidence suggested that it could measure a unidimensional construct with high reliability. The aggregate scale constructed from the instrument's items also displayed a central tendency and normal unimodal distribution. This was a positive finding and suggested that the instrument could be useful in producing a self-efficacy measurement for use in the testing designs preferred by second language researchers. The potential applications of this instrument are discussed while highlighting how this report acts as an illustration for investigators to use when researching self-efficacy.

Despite coverage of materials development principles in the applied linguistics literature, principled production of open textbooks has not received attention. To address this gap and demonstrate the interdisciplinary potential of materials development research, the authors drew upon concurrent verbalization and interview data they collected while composing their first coursebook, a freely available open textbook designed for first-year university writing courses that enroll English first-language and second-language learners, to discern how they applied principles. Qualitative content analysis of the data indicated the novice textbook writers focused on learning objectives to negotiate textbook relevancy and currency concerns, tried to create relatable content, and employed varied repetition and layering to build modular chapters. This study illustrates the generalizability of materials development research and principles and offers a view of open textbook authorship for teachers interested in the activity.

Introduction to Computer Science is traditionally the first course that all computer science and software engineering majors take. The course introduces many problem-solving techniques which can be challenging for many freshman students. In order to mitigate some of the issues of this course, we, at the Higher Education Institute, introduced a new prerequisite course, Introduction to Programming Logic, which is a required course for all students who have not taken any previous computer science course. In the Summer Session of 2022, we included prize-based learning in one of the sections of the course. Prize-based learning is similar to both problem-based learning and project-based learning in many aspects, including the principle of student-centred learning. However, it differs with respect to the motivation for student success. This approach utilises the students' ambition to win, to encourage students to work harder and learn more both inside as well as outside the classroom.

This study examines the often-heard assumption in science teaching that some pedagogies in science classrooms can serve a dual function--improve the student-perceived teacher quality and improve students' affinity to STEM professions. We asked 7507 freshmen from 40 colleges in the United States, selected in a stratified random procedure, to retrospectively report their experiences of a list of 32 pedagogies during high school biology, chemistry, and physics classes. Our survey also asked students to rate each teachers' quality and to report their Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics career interests at the beginning and end of high school. We found that teachers' chosen pedagogies, on the whole, had a stronger impact on how students rated them than on students' career interests. Interestingly, we also found considerable differences between the disciplines.

This study focuses on the design and the implementation of a digital environment aimed at fostering strategic planning competence in problem-solving through individualization features: the Individualized Planned Strategy Environment (IPSE). Within IPSE, students are engaged in a sequence of oriented activities, guiding them in constructing and following a theoretically justified plan for solving a mathematical problem, thus promoting a gradual integration between conceptual and procedural knowledge. IPSE envisages also meta-level activities, aimed at fostering the handling of multiple representations toward a unifying and structural view of the subject at stake. We discuss the results of a case study conducted with engineering freshmen at the University of Salerno, involved in problem-solving activities devoted to peer assessment. This led us to identify certain student profiles both theory- and data-driven, according to the students' progress in using the components of Habermas' rationality when solving a problem. We highlighted that some students show a full realization of the dynamic nature of Habermas' model of rationality, where knowing, acting and communicating interact and intertwine.

This study aims to analyse the impact of demographic and educational factors on in digital upskilling. We address the relationship between digital skills, critical thinking skills and the student learning experience in courses with embedded upskilling programs. Statistical analysis and exploratory research are used to analyse the data collected by the digital fitness app developed by a global company leading digital talent transformation. Our research identified the following demographic indicators that have influenced individuals' digital upskilling: Gender, Race, Residency, Pell-eligibility, Age, in addition to six academic indicators including department, major, class level, first-time freshman, High School GPA and ACT score. Discussion of findings and future research directions would lead to novel research articles focusing on longitudinal studies to assess digital skills. Also, this study shows the need for a new assessment tool to expand the scope and the sample size of the study. This article provides a valuable guidance for policy makers, higher-education institutions, educators, students, and employers, who are looking for digital talent or skill sets needed for digital transformation. The main contribution lays in data collection and analysis. This is the first study using a globally accepted digital talent assessment tool to collect data at a minority serving institution.

Recent reports show that low-income students make up a significant share of those participating in higher education, and their well-being constitutes a key factor that influences their college success. This mixed-methods study examined first-year, low-income students' time use and its relationship to well-being framed by an equity-oriented lens that recognizes the time constraints low-income students navigate. Our mixed methods findings identified the link between time use and well-being and--critically--empirical explanations for these links. First, leveraging a unique experience sampling survey design and multilevel analyses, we found that attending class, studying or doing homework, and working for pay were consistently and adversely related to low-income students' well-being. Low-income students who were also first-generation in college fared worse than continuing-generation students when engaging in these experiences. On the other hand, socializing was positively related to low-income students' well-being. Second, an exploration of longitudinal data from hundreds of student interviews illuminated two primary factors that shaped the relationship between low-income students' time use and well-being: (a) structuring time and developing a routine, and (b) the power of reflection and meaning-making. These findings provide important novel insights about low-income students' college experiences and the relationship between their time use and well-being, and offer crucial guidance for educators on how to support low-income students' well-being as they navigate college.

Background: Team-based learning (TBL) is a widely recognised pedagogical strategy used in diverse fields and courses. Despite the success of TBL, certain concerns have arisen regarding social loafing within group collaboration contexts; this loafing can reduce the overall effectiveness of learning. Objectives: This study addressed the aforementioned concerns by integrating group awareness (GA) information into each stage of TBL, resulting in a TBL + GA system designed to enhance TBL instruction. During online collaborative learning, GA information provides insights into the activities completed by peers and thus the peers' preparedness and achievement; this knowledge fosters motivation, participation, and reflection. Methods: A quasiexperiment was performed with students from two freshman classes (40 and 41 students, respectively) in a Taiwanese university; the control and experimental classes used the TBL only and TBL + GA systems, respectively. Student learning effort was evaluated in terms of preclass preparation, including the use of learning materials and online test scores. Learning achievement was evaluated by assessing the quality of students' assignments. Student feedback, including peer evaluations and students' perceptions of their TBL experience, was collected and compared for the two classes. Results and Conclusions: The TBL + GA system significantly enhanced the preclass preparation efforts of the participants, mitigating social loafing. This improvement manifested as higher practice engagement and better online assessment scores. The TBL + GA system also improved assignment quality and elicited more constructive and positive peer feedback. Implications: Integrating GA information into each stage of TBL may positively affect the effectiveness of instruction. The proposed TBL + GA system can serve as a practical model for instructors seeking to enhance TBL implementation and foster a more engaging and constructive learning environment.

In Chinese vocational colleges, students often avoid classroom challenges and lack persistent academic engagement. This was perceived as a deficiency in self-efficacy and a need for greater teacher-student engagement. The rapid advancement of information technology in educational contexts indicates that the dynamics among teacher support, technological autonomy, and self-efficacy will become crucial for learning outcomes. Hence, this study explored the relationship between teacher support and student self-efficacy, focusing on the mediating role of student autonomy in technology. A questionnaire survey administered to 606 first-year students was analyzed using Pearson's correlation coefficient and Process V3.3. The results showed that teacher support and student self-efficacy were moderately positively correlated (r = 0.464, p < 0.01). However, technological autonomy appeared to be significantly positively correlated with teacher support (r = 0.368, p < 0.01) and self-efficacy (r = 0.515, p < 0.01). The results highlight the instrumental role of teacher support in enhancing student self-efficacy and the important role of technological autonomy as a mediating factor. These findings confirm the need for continuing social support and interactive roles between teachers and students to enhance student self-efficacy in higher education. Furthermore, technology should be leveraged to foster a conducive learning environment.

This study investigated the development of study engagement from the end of upper secondary school through the first and second years of higher education. The participants experienced the challenges related to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic while they were either university students or preparing for university entrance exams. The study employed a person-oriented approach to determine what kind of developmental trajectories emerge in study engagement when following the student participants from the end of upper secondary school through the first and second years of higher education. Furthermore, the study investigated whether socio-emotional skills obtained by the end of secondary school and before the pandemic play a role in more adaptive development through demanding restrictions related to the worldwide pandemic and general changes in the learning environment. The 852 participants answered questionnaires on study engagement and socio-emotional skills in spring 2019, and of them, 426 individuals who continued their education answered regarding study engagement again in spring 2020 and winter 2020/2021. The grades in math and Finnish language were also included. The results indicated that most students tended to experience a drop in study engagement during the first wave of COVID-19 compared to the pre-pandemic level; however, they managed to boost their engagement back to previous levels approximately 6 months later. Students who managed to recover their engagement also tended to have higher socio-emotional skills than students who were struggling with study engagement before the pandemic or who started to struggle during the pandemic.

Compulsory attendance in communication skills courses offered at colleges of engineering seems to be a problematic issue for many students because it prevents them from performing well in such courses. Many students believe that time spent on these courses comes at the expense of focusing on core courses and worsens their overall performance in these courses. As such, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between attendance and students' overall performance in communication skills courses for the sake of providing suggestions that would enhance students' performance as well as allowing them to allocate more time to the core courses they are enrolled in. Making students' life easier would not only improve their status at the educational level but would also create a feeling of comfort and satisfaction in their surroundings, particularly among family members and friends. Participants in the study are university students enrolled in the college of engineering at a Middle Eastern university. The study yields significant results showing that compulsory attendance has no significant relationship with students' overall performance in communication skills courses. Relaxing attendance regulations might provide some margin of freedom for students to focus more on the engineering core courses without compromising their success in communication skills courses. The study provides significant recommendations that stakeholders can utilize to motivate students to perform well in communication skills courses while addressing any concerns they might have regarding the core courses they are enrolled in.

Four institutions hypothesized that civic engagement in first-year courses reinforces career readiness by helping students think critically, communicate effectively, and work well with diversity. We measured teamwork skills, the ability to synthesize and apply different perspectives, and the ability to express, listen to, and adapt ideas based on the perspective of others. We compared self-assessments to direct assessment of student-created artifacts and found a positive correlation that encourages further enquiry.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to better understand the transition from secondary school to higher education regarding students' assessment and written-exam experiences. We used mixed methods to investigate students' experiences of first-year university physics exams and cancelled secondary school exams, regarding their motivational beliefs (regarding themes such as self-efficacy and test anxiety) and sense of belonging. Questionnaire findings from 78 physics students suggest those who felt more negatively impacted by cancelled school exams felt less prepared, less self-efficacious, and more anxious in their university exams than students who felt more positively impacted. Follow-up focus groups with five students revealed they felt out of practice sitting high-stakes university exams and unprepared for the new open-book format, contributing to their test anxiety. Cancelled school exams also provided short-term relief, but belongingness uncertainty; students felt unable to prove themselves and questioned whether they had earned their place in higher education. Our findings suggest that the exam experience is central to both creating a sense of belonging for students and building mastery experiences in terms of self-efficacy and test anxiety.

This study aims to develop and evaluate a Chinese language course designed to enhance college students' critical thinking skills through the integration of deep learning theory and Outcome-Based Education (OBE). The research specifically addresses two questions: (1) What are the characteristics of a Chinese language course that integrates Deep Learning Theory and OBE? (2) What are the effects of this course on promoting critical thinking skills among undergraduate students? The study employs a quasi-experimental design, involving 120 undergraduate students divided into a control group and a test group from Nan fang College, Guangzhou, China. The control group received conventional teaching methods, while the test group participated in the newly developed course. Data were collected through pre-tests and post-tests using California critical thinking skills test (Chinese version), as well as semi-structured interviews. Results indicate a significant improvement in the critical thinking skills of students in the test group compared to the control group. The test group showed higher mean scores and lower standard deviations in post-test results, demonstrating the effectiveness of the course in enhancing critical thinking abilities. Qualitative data from interviews supported these findings, highlighting increased student engagement and deeper understanding of course materials. The findings suggest that this integrated approach can be effectively implemented in other educational contexts to achieve similar outcomes.

Developing a professional STEM workforce with a high degree of intercultural competence is essential in today's globalized world.To this end, Higher Education Institutions incorporate reflection to help students make meaning of their learning experiences. In this study, we investigated the development of intercultural and teamwork skills among undergraduate first-year STEM students enrolled in a global living- learning community. The goal of the community was to help students develop intercultural competence and teamwork skills by engaging them in active learning environments and reflection. The study used an inductive thematic approach to characterize the impact of the learning community on intercultural competence and teamwork skills.The themes for intercultural competence showed that students develop cross-cultural communication skills, cultural self-awareness, and respect for people from other cultures. The themes for teamwork indicated that students learned to work in multicultural teams and developed the ability to recognize cross-cultural conflict and manage time. An additional theme of a sense of belonging emerged during the analysis; students mentioned that they felt a sense of connectedness and made new friends. Overall, the results of the study underscore the importance of reflection, engaging students in a living-learning community, and fostering intercultural competence and teamwork skills in first-year students. Also, the development of a sense of belonging among first-year students highlights the value of embedding reflection and creating living-learning communities within higher education settings.

Future students are confronted with a complex world that demands the ability to solve problems in unstructured, undefined, and unfamiliar situations. The aim of the present study was to investigate the development of problem-solving skills through the implementation of Problem-Based Learning (PBL). While previous research has primarily focused on content-related and long-term measurements when examining the effects of PBL, this study took a different approach by exploring the general increase in problem-solving skills resulting from PBL. The sample consisted of 90 second-semester students who were assessed at three different time points using three subscales of the Wilde-Intelligenz-Test I & II: "analogies (AL), letter series (BR) and numerical series (ZN)." The findings revealed a significant improvement in general problem-solving abilities within the PBL group. These results provide valuable insights into the impact of PBL on the development of general problem-solving skills, even within a domain-independent and short-term context. Lecturers are encouraged to consider implementing PBL in their study programs, as it equips graduates with the necessary skills to tackle the challenges of today's dynamic and constantly changing world.

Students with high-incidence disabilities such as learning disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) need to have the strategies and skills of self-advocacy to request and obtain accommodations. However, Latino male students in particular have not been given the opportunity to acquire self-advocacy skills prior to entering the postsecondary education setting. This single-subject, multiple baseline study examined the effects of the Self-Advocacy and Conflict Resolution (SACR) intervention on three Latino male college students with high-incidence disabilities ability to request academic accommodations. Findings demonstrated a functional relationship between the self-advocacy intervention and students' abilities to request academic accommodations in a role-play situation. In addition, all participants were able to fully generalize all target behaviors to a real-life setting. Also, percentage of non-overlapping data (PND) results indicated that the intervention used was effective and data obtained from a social validity survey revealed the significance of the effects of the intervention on the dependent variables. Recommendations for supporting the self-advocacy skills of students with disabilities in the postsecondary environment, as well as implications for future research are discussed.

Combating the spread of misinformation is a struggle that has inspired considerable research in the fields of psychology, education, political science, and information science, among others. Such research has found that "prebunking" or "inoculation" techniques--strategies that reduce the acceptance of misinformation before one has encountered it--have had marked success. However, there is little evidence that librarians are deliberately employing inoculation techniques in their information literacy (IL) instruction. Via a quasi-experimental study, this research explores the effect of prebunking techniques in an IL instruction session on undergraduate students' ability to recognise misinformation. The prebunking techniques are delivered through a competitive game called Chaos Creator, based on the Bad News game developed by researchers at Cambridge University. Results of the study show that misinformation inoculation techniques are more effective than the popular source evaluation tool, the CRAP test, in helping students identify misinformation. However, misinformation inoculation techniques can backfire, causing students to become overly sceptical of trustworthy messages.